Abstract:
Niyogi and Berwick have developed a deterministic dynamical model of language change from which they analytically derive logistic, Sshaped spread of a linguistic variant through a speech community given certain assumptions about the language learning procedure, the linguistic environment, and so forth. I will demonstrate that the same assumptions embedded in a stochastic model of language change lead to dierent and sometimes counterintuitive predictions. I will go on to argue that stochastic models are more appropriate and can support greater demographic and (psycho)linguistic realism, leading to more insightful accounts of the (putative) growth rates of attested changes. 1 Introduction It has been observed that language changes (often?) spread through a speech community following an S-shaped pattern, beginning slowly, spreading faster, then slowing o before nally extinguishing a competing variant (e.g. Weinreich et al. , 1968; Chen, 1972; Bailey, 1973:77; Lass, 1997; She...
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